Monday, July 14, 2008

Ice Cream Tiramisu – Hey Hey It’s Donna Day

This is my first time participating in the Hey Hey It’s Donna Day event, mostly because I hadn’t heard of it before. This month Addicted Sweet Tooth is hosting, with the theme recipe being Tiramisu. Tiramisu is an excellent theme for me to start on, because I love a good tiramisu. Unfortunately, I had already made (and posted about) tiramisu cupcakes. However, I had already been bouncing an idea around in my head for an ice cream based tiramisu. I decided I wantedtiramisu that was made with layers of mascarpone ice cream and coffee soaked sponge cake. In figuring out how to make the mascarpone ice cream recipe, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to use a custard based ice cream or not, since I was finding recipes for both. However, a little research on Wikipedia showed me that a traditional tiramisu is also made with Zabaglione, which I thought was perfect, because I could use it as a base for my mascarpone ice cream. The resulting tiramisu was decadent. I should note that due to some caffeine limitations in my family, I used decaffeinated coffee in the recipe, but regular coffee or a strong espresso would work equally well.

1. In the bowl of a double boiler, whisk together the egg yolks and the sugar until combined. Whisk in the cinnamon.

2. Continuing to whisk, add the Marsala wine a small amount at the time.

3. Keep whisking the mixture until it doubles in volume and thickens considerably. The whisk should be leaving trails in the cream. Some recipes suggest this occurs at 180 degrees (F), but I did not take the temperature.

4. Pour the zabaglione into a bowl. While the custard is still warm whisk in the mascarpone cheese.

5. Place the mixture in the fridge to cool.

6. When you are ready to make it into ice cream, take the zabaglione out of the fridge and whisk the heavy cream into it until smooth.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In the bowl of a double boiler whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla. Whisk continuously, until the eggs are just warm to the touch. You are not cooking the eggs at this point, and only want the mix to reach about 110 degrees.

2. Pour the heated egg mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer. Beat the mix on high for about 5 minutes. The mixture cannot be overbeaten, it will eventually just stop gaining volume.

3. Whisk together the salt and the flour in a bowl.

4. Pour 1/3 of the butter into the eggs. Sift 1/3 of the flour over the eggs. Gently fold them together. Do this twice more, until all of the butter and flour are incorporated.

5. Line a 10 x 15 inch jelly roll pan (cookie sheet) with parchment paper. Butter the parchment and sprinkle it with sugar. Pour in the cake batter, and bake for about 14 minutes, or until the cake is brown around the edges, and golden on top.

Assembly

This is a little tricky, because you have to work with ice cream. The ice cream needs to be soft enough to work with, but you don’t want it to melt. I would recommend putting the ice cream in the fridge when you start your assembly, so that it softens, and putting it back into the fridge when you’re not actually using it. The steps in this are a little hard to describe, so the photos might be a little easier to follow.

1. Place a harness of tinfoil into the bottom of each ramekin, so that the tinfoil comes over the side (this will be used to unmold the tiramisu later). Place a circle of parchment paper into the bottom of each ramekin over the tin foil. (see pictures).

2. Butter the inside of the ramekins.

3. Cut off about the bottom ¼ of each lady finger (I thought they were too tall otherwise). Try to get the lady fingers to uniform length. Place the lady fingers in a layer inside the ramekin.

4. Use a circular cookie cutter that fits into the ramekin to punch circles out of the sponge cake. I found my cake was a little too thick, so I cut somewhere between 1/3 and ½ of the cake off the tops of my cake disks.

5. In a shallow bowl, mix the coffee, sugar, coffee extract, and kahlua. Dip the sponge cake rounds into the coffee. Don’t leave them in there too long or they will fall apart. The bottom of the sponge cake will also hold together better. Press a disk of sponge cake into the bottom of each ramekin.

6. Spoon 1-2 large spoonfuls of ice cream into the ramekins. Use the back of the spoon to press the ice cream down into the ramekin. If your ice cream is becoming runny at this point, you may want to put your tiramisus into the freezer to firm up.

7. Prepare a second set of sponge cake disks. Dip them into the coffee mixture, and press them into the ramekins on top of the ice cream.

8. Spoon 1-2 more spoonfuls of the ice cream into the ramekins. Flatten as best you can with the back of your spoon. Put the ramekins into the freezer to firm up. I left mine in there for an hour.

9. Use a small offset spatula to smooth the tops of the ramekins. Sift cocoa powder over the tops of the tiramisus. Use a microplaner to shave some milk chocolate over the top of each tiramisu.

10. Put back into the freezer. I served these straight from the freezer, and they were too firm (my parents have a very cold freezer. I would recommend unmolding them, because this is easiest to do when they are totally frozen, and then possibly moving them to the fridge when you sit down to dinner so they soften, or potentially even to the counter, depending on how much time will pass.